Reply to: How to protect documents from being shared/pirated?

[MPwannadecentincome]

There is an option when creating a .PDF to prevent the PDF reader allowing copying of the text. It would only stop the casual copyer, obviously.

I think this depends on the reader you use taking any notice of it? Adobe Reader might but I gave up using that a year ago when it took so long to start up and ate up all my memory.

[RichardCranium]

If you have a PDF document with text in then you can select the text in the reader and still copy it.

There is an option when creating a .PDF to prevent the PDF reader allowing copying of the text. It would only stop the casual copyer, obviously.

[MPwannadecentincome]

faintly watermarked .PDFs that say where they have been stolen from, and that cannot easily be copy 'n' pasted.

Doesn't stop anyone printing it out then scanning it with OCR software to create a new document.

If you have a PDF document with text in then you can select the text in the reader and still copy it.

If you generate an image from the 'document' then there is no text to select, so its a bit harder but then yes OCR software can be used to copy it, unless you can find a font that is still legible but also confusing to most OCR software.

[Lumiere]

.exe wrapper for texts, like those exam trainers ?

[Fred Bloggs]

Sounds like you need to publish a book to me.

[ThomasSoerensen]

My friend is starting a business which involves the distribution of knowledge contained in office documents.

Probably the biggest risk to the business would be piracy and copying of the files.

Does anyone know a good way to protect the files? They are distributed on usb drive / CD / download.


Thanks.

to me it sounds like a short lived business.
if your friend does not provide anything more than the knowledge in the docs he will be copied and his product made free quite quickly. Unless in some obscure niche ofcourse.

why not mix it with come human consulting. It can still be made slightly scalable.

[DimPrawn]

http://www.fileopen.com/fileopen_pdf...FU0B4wodL1dZjg

[Spacecadet]

how many clients are going to be recieving these documents?

If it is a small number then it might be simpler to give each client their own version of each document. Only needs to be slightly different (a few word changes here and there), but the difference will be enough to allow you to trace a leak should said document appear on a file sharing system.

Still, unless you envisage 10's of thousands of people using these documents then chances are they will never appear on any file sharing sites anway

[VectraMan]

Hmm yeah, was thinking more along the lines of watermarking the docs. I found one application which batch converts them all to .pdf and watermarks them, but the problem is some docs need to be editable.

PDFs can be editable. Not sure how it all works though.

If you can read it, you can copy it. But there are pleanty of ways to display text that can't be simply cut and paste, which is better than nothing. A screengrab and OCR would defeat it though.

[DiscoStu]

Don`t Word documents contain metadata identifying the creator?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...ice.11%29.aspx

Doesn't stop anyone printing it out then scanning it with OCR software to create a new document.

[dinker]

Don`t Word documents contain metadata identifying the creator?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...ice.11%29.aspx

[RichardCranium]

Hmm yeah, was thinking more along the lines of watermarking the docs. I found one application which batch converts them all to .pdf and watermarks them

There's a company called SkillsPride that I use for my soft skills training. They provide just that: faintly watermarked .PDFs that say where they have been stolen from, and that cannot easily be copy 'n' pasted.

, but the problem is some docs need to be editable.

Oh. Damn. Is their a formal business relationship with those doing the editing? If so, wrapping it up in contracts may be the best bet.

[chris79]

Hmm yeah, was thinking more along the lines of watermarking the docs. I found one application which batch converts them all to .pdf and watermarks them, but the problem is some docs need to be editable.

[RichardCranium]

Consider MOD documents marked Secret. There are documented procedures, special training, only checked out people can access the documents, special safes, all sorts of protection.

They get left in the back of cabs.

You cannot stop people faxing, photocopying or simply stealing documents or the media they are stored on.

[Moscow Mule]

Anything which is simple text is copyable, whatever you do to try and prevent distribution.